


Like Submarines

by yelp



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: During Canon, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yelp/pseuds/yelp
Summary: When Yukimitsu is grounded and can no longer sneak off to practice, he thinks his football dreams are over. Hiruma thinks otherwise.
Relationships: Hiruma Youichi/Yukimitsu Manabu
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	Like Submarines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1helluvabutler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1helluvabutler/gifts).



> I love this pairing, so I'm super excited I got to write it for you! Apologies that I only very vaguely managed to work in the submarines. Hope you enjoy, and happy holidays!
> 
> For the ES21 Secret Santa. 

Only three days into being grounded, and his past three months on the football team were already starting to feel like nothing more than a quaint and unrealistic dream. 

The idea had been far-fetched in the first place: him, Yukimitsu Manabu, nerd extraordinaire, playing football with the likes of the powerful Kurita, and the amazing Eyeshield 21, here all the way from Notre Dame. Totally impossible, right? 

He'd made it through tryouts, he'd balanced sneaking off to practice with keeping up his studies, and he was already starting to feel new muscle developing, where previously he'd been twigs and tendon. 

But all it took was a short time away from the field for reality settle back in. 

The soreness from last practice was already gone, and his lingering bruises had all but faded. The team might have wondered at his absence for a minute or two, but by now he'd be forgotten. Maybe that was for the better. 

As for Manabu, it was back to history and math for him, essays and exams. Ink stains rather than grass stains. Parallel lines ruling his notebook, rather than marking the yards on the field. Writing cramping in his fingers, rather than the sport that worked his whole body, made him feel alive. 

If he found himself doodling pass formations in the margins of his notes, well, he only had to catch himself in time and erase them, before his mother came to check on him. Soon the impressions on his brain would fade as well, he supposed. 

Focus, he admonished himself. He turned the page in his history book, to find it sprinkled with grainy black-and-white photos of battleships and submarines. As he bent closer to read the captions, he almost missed a flash of motion outside the window. 

Even when he looked up for a double take, he could hardly believe it. 

There was a devil prowling their quiet suburban street. 

A shock of blond, making its way right towards their house, getting closer and closer until it passed under his window—and disappeared.

It couldn't be. 

Manabu told himself it was just a hallucination. He clearly had too much football on his mind. 

Then the doorbell rang. Manabu's pencil dropped from his slack fingers, and rolled off his desk. 

From downstairs, the sound of his mother's voice carried up through the floorboards. What could she possibly be talking to him about, so pleasantly? And, more horrifyingly, what could the demon captain want, here of all places—

"Manabu?" his mother called. Before he could think how to respond, footsteps on the stairs announced her imminent arrival. Two sets of footsteps. 

The door opened, and there was his mother, Yukimitsu Akari, and there was his football captain, Hiruma Youichi, two people he'd never have expected to see in the same room, much less standing right next to each other. Well, Hiruma was slightly behind, still partially in the hall, flashing a grin to rival a shark's, eyes promising pain and hellfire over Akari's unsuspecting shoulder. 

"Really, Manabu," his mother was saying. "Why didn't you ever tell me you had a boyfriend?" and the word knocked Manabu out of his shock and right into mind-boggling incomprehension. 

He couldn't have heard that right. 

A _what_?

Akari turned to Hiruma, who instantly dropped the ghastly look on his face, swapping it for such a vision of innocence that surely his mother would see right through it. "Teenage boys can be so thoughtless," she said, as if Hiruma wasn't one himself. 

"Oh, if he hasn't mentioned me, I'm sure that's all my fault," Hiruma simpered. "I've been a terrible boyfriend. Never take him anywhere romantic, it's always study, study, study with me. We met while I was tutoring his cram school class. Such a great student."

"Isn't he?" Akari nodded along. "If only he would apply himself more." She frowned in Manabu's general direction, and he hastily dropped his hand over his notebook, sure that she could see some faint remnant of his doodles.

The movement caught Hiruma's attention; his head swiveled sharply, with a predator's instincts, as if he too could sense the erased pass routes. Then he relaxed back into whatever gentle, _terrifying_ role he was trying to play.

"I started at Tokyo University this year, you see," he lied glibly, "and I just know Yuki could get in too. He's so smart! I want to do everything I can to help him fulfill his potential, you know?"

"How wonderful!" Akari lit up. "I went to Todai myself. What wonderful years you'll have there. Both of you, if I could just get Manabu to focus on his studies!"

"He's not allowed to leave the house these days?" Hiruma looked over, and did something with his face that technically could have been described as a pout. It made Manabu's life flash before his eyes. "You didn't even tell me you were grounded, Yuki... I had to find out from your _lovely_ mother..."

"Oh, well," Akari looked a little embarrassed. "He's been behaving so strangely lately, I thought he must be... He never told me it was for... Well, never mind that. I'm still a mom, you know. Heaven forbid I get in the way of my son and true love."

"Does that mean I could still take him on study dates?" said Hiruma, so earnestly it was obviously fake. Surely his mother, one of the smartest people in the world, wouldn't fall for that?

But all she said was, "As long as you boys really do study," with a knowing smile. She shot one last glare over at Manabu, one that promised they'd have words later, and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Head still spinning, Manabu turned to Hiruma, about to ask him what was going on—only to find a machine gun pointed at him instead. Where on earth had he been hiding that? Gone was the bashful suitor, bodyswitched with the devil captain he knew so well. 

"Think you can escape from me that easily?" he cackled, pressing the gun closer on each syllable, until it was jammed right up against Manabu, digging under his collar. "I'll come drag you out of hell if that's what it takes to bring you to practice. Now get packed before I shoot your brains out and send you there, you fucking baldy."

"My brains aren't—in my neck—" Manabu managed to choke out, before Hiruma's grip shifted, and there came a worryingly loud clack. 

Self preservation took hold. Manabu jumped up, scrambling to get his football gear together. His bag was still sitting ready in the closet, his uniform freshly laundered, if buried under his winter clothes. As he tucked things into his bag at gunpoint, a strange sense of peace stole over him.

Despite the threat to his life, it was, for some reason... utterly reassuring. 

That this whole football thing had been real, not just some crazy daydream.

That he mattered enough to the team for Hiruma to come get him, in his own insane way. 

That he wasn't done with football, not yet.

Or that it wasn't done with him.

***

An hour later, he was regretting mattering so much to the team. Hiruma had him running laps and catching passes, or attempting to, all the while dodging an endless hail of bullets. Like he was trying to make up for lost time, by cramming three days of practice into one afternoon.

As if that weren't bad enough, once Manabu found himself truly out of breath, muscles shaking, sweat dripping down the back of his neck, Hiruma began to quiz him out of his textbook.

"I told your mom I'd cram this useless knowledge into your brain. It just better not knock these fucking pass routes out, you fucking baldy."

And so Manabu went out for another lap, this time trying to follow whatever route Hiruma barked out, while simultaneously answering questions about the role of the Japanese navy in World War II.

He didn't know how long this went on, before he finally went down on a pass, clutching the ball in his arms and collapsing with it onto the turf. It wasn't the first time he'd done it that day, but it was the first time that Hiruma let him be afterwards. 

"Manned torpedoes!" he shrieked, when the devilish shadow fell over him, but instead of kicking him back onto his feet, Hiruma only flopped down an arm's span away, gun falling to the grass on one side of him, Manabu's history book to the other. 

On closer look, Hiruma was breathing heavily too, chest rising and falling rapidly, breath huffing visibly into the cold air. Sweat glinted at his temple, and Manabu found himself fixing on the sight, as if he'd never seen perspiration before. Maybe he'd never really noticed Hiruma's, never known the guy was human after all. 

"Um, Hiruma," he found himself saying. "Thanks."

Hiruma stopped panting to give him a squinty look, like he was crazy. Maybe he was. 

But this was the second time now, that Hiruma had let him into this world, when he had no right to it. 

The first time had been back at the very start, during the tryouts in Hell Tower. Manabu was bright enough to tell when someone was doing him a favor, and he had _known_ there was no ice left in his bag, had only kept forging on through the inferno because he didn't even have the energy to remember how to stop. 

At the time, he couldn't believe it, the idea that the cruel commander from hell would actually bend the rules, and for him of all people. 

After today, there was no doubt: Hiruma was actively helping him to stay on the team. And the most incomprehensible part? He was going to such lengths for Yukimitsu Manabu, of all people, who had spent his life behind a desk, who had zero athletic skill, who was total garbage at football. 

"Always liked submarines," Hiruma said abruptly. He'd picked up the textbook again, and was thumbing through it like a flipbook. "You don't see them, but they're there below the surface. Gathering intelligence. Getting into position. They sneak up on you, a secret weapon."

"I didn't think you cared to keep your weapons a secret." Manabu nodded at the machine gun laid out at Hiruma's elbow, and was rewarded with a razor-toothed grin.

"Oh, I got the whole arsenal."

Slowly, painfully, Manabu managed to stand again. He'd never felt so worn in his life, but he couldn't stop now. 

"Sorry I missed practice," he said. "I know I can't afford to, if I want to be your, um, secret weapon."

As soon as he said the words, he winced, sure he'd gotten it wrong. Why would he think Hiruma was talking about him, with all the submarine stuff? 

But Hiruma only settled back on his elbows, pleased. "All you have to do is be exactly where I need you at all times. Anticipate my every pass. Get there right when I want you to be. Can you do that?"

Manabu thought to the catch he'd just made, and nodded, resolved. "I can do that."

With a shriek of laughter, Hiruma swept up his gun, and let out a spray of bullets, sending Manabu running for his life. "That's fucking impossible, you fucking idiot! Don't just say you can do things if you can't guarantee it!"

And they started again. They didn't call it a day until the sky turned orange and the crickets were starting to sing. By then, Manabu was in a world of pain, and he knew it was only going to feel worse in the morning. 

He had caught the ball a bunch more times. 

He was euphoric. 

"Go have a fucking shower," Hiruma said. "I don't want weird looks from your mom if I return you like this."

As Manabu headed into the clubroom, he paused at the door. Before Hiruma could yell at him or shoot him, he blurted, "I won't take my eyes off you. I'll know where you need to pass to, before the opponents do. Before even you do. And I'll get there. Like..." he faltered, embarrassed, then forged on, "like a submarine. Like a secret weapon."

Hiruma snorted, and unceremoniously pushed him into the dark room. "Good."

"Good?"

"You heard what I said, you fucking baldy." Hiruma came in after him, flipped on the lights. He gave a short, sharp whistle on his way to his locker, and Cerberus came bursting in through a little dog door that Manabu could have sworn hadn't been there three days ago. 

"Even though... you said that's impossible?" Manabu felt a little faint, and he wasn't sure it was all from the exercise.

"Exactly because it's impossible. If it was easy, anyone could do it. And then I wouldn't have had to come drag your bald ass back out here, would I? I could've had the fucking monkey do it. Even the fucking basketball helpers! It's only because it's impossible that I need you." As he spoke, Hiruma began to strip off his gear. Cerberus caught each piece as it was dropped, and dragged it off to a heap in the corner, tail beating furiously. 

"You really put yourself to a lot of trouble," Manabu said ruefully, giving the dog a wide berth as he began to follow suit—though he stuffed his gear into his bag. "Pretending to be my... my boyfriend, and all."

"Got you out of the house, didn't I?" Hiruma was down to his jersey now, and fished out a dog treat from his locker. "Don't think a grounding's going to get you out of practice. Don't think anything will." He jabbed the treat in Manabu's direction, threateningly, then tossed it to Cerberus, who caught it with a crunch. 

"Well, if we're supposed to be dating now," Manabu suggested, "maybe I should call you, um... Yo... Youi..."

"Don't even think about it," Hiruma said, and shoved him into the shower. 


End file.
